I read an article a year or two ago (maybe posted here?) about Japan's zoning laws and they just make sense.
- Rather than dozens of categories, there are just 4 or 5 in increasing amounts of annoyance (e.g residence -> retail/office -> manufacturing) and areas approved for one level can always be used by lower levels.
- The laws are uniform nationally.
- Zoning decisions get made at higher levels (prefecture or national?) so they can consider what the whole region needs, and get less NIMBYism / maximize-my-near-term-property-value-ism.
I don't recall whether they even have the distinct single-family versus multi-family dwelling categorization that seems to cause so much of the housing supply shortage in the U.S.
I read an article a year or two ago (maybe posted here?) about Japan's zoning laws and they just make sense.
- Rather than dozens of categories, there are just 4 or 5 in increasing amounts of annoyance (e.g residence -> retail/office -> manufacturing) and areas approved for one level can always be used by lower levels.
- The laws are uniform nationally.
- Zoning decisions get made at higher levels (prefecture or national?) so they can consider what the whole region needs, and get less NIMBYism / maximize-my-near-term-property-value-ism.
I don't recall whether they even have the distinct single-family versus multi-family dwelling categorization that seems to cause so much of the housing supply shortage in the U.S.